The Falmouth Time Ball Ronald S Hawkins
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The Falmouth Time Ball By Ronald S Hawkins TROZE The Online Journal of the National Maritime Museum Cornwall www.nmmc.co.uk April 2012 Volume 3 Number 2 TROZE Troze is the journal of the National Maritime Museum Cornwall whose mission is to promote an understanding of small boats and their place in people’s lives, and of the maritime history of Cornwall. ‘Troze: the sound made by water about the bows of a boat in motion’ From R. Morton Nance, A Glossary of Cornish Sea Words Editorial Board Editor Dr. Helen Doe Dr Anna Green, University of Exeter, Tremough Captain George Hogg RN, National Maritime Museum Cornwall Dr Alston Kennerley, University of Plymouth Tony Pawlyn, Head of Library, National Maritime Museum Cornwall Professor Philip Payton, Institute of Cornish Studies, University of Exeter Dr Nigel Rigby, National Maritime Museum Michael Stammers, Merseyside Maritime Museum We welcome article submissions on any aspect relating to our mission. Please contact the editor at [email protected] or National Maritime Museum Cornwall Discovery Quay Falmouth Cornwall TR11 3QY United Kingdom © 2012 National Maritime Museum Cornwall and Ronald S Hawkins Ronald S Hawkins A retired Master Mariner with a long interest in history and research, Ron initially worked on projects for the Cornwall Maritime Museum. Since the creation of the National Maritime Museum Cornwall, he has volunteered in the Bartlett Library where he deals with a wide range of queries. His main interests are in the Falmouth Packet Service, the history of the Merchant Navy and marine art. The Falmouth Time Ball Ronald S Hawkins When told that longitude had been ‘found’, Sir Isaac Newton is said to have replied that he never knew it had been lost! Whether playing the pedantic scientist or displaying a sense of humour he was making a valid point. It was easy for cartographers to divide the globe with great circle lines running through the poles and to show them on their charts but it was difficult for mariners to establish their position in relation to them. Similarly, after the pursuit of red herrings such as the earth’s magnetic field, the solution became apparent but the means was not available. As the earth turns through 360 degree each day, longitude could be equated to time so it was only necessary for the mariner to know how his local time differed from his departure time to know his longitude. Some form of reliable clock was needed. While famously this was eventually solved by Harrison who developed his chronometer, even the best could not keep perfect time.1 In the nineteenth century time signals, either visual or audible, allowed the accuracy of the shipboard chronometer to be checked and for a period they were seen as essential aids to navigation. This article seeks to establish the events around the decision to establish a time signal at the Cornish port of Falmouth and to follow its construction and operation. It will set out the arguments used by supporters and show what resistance the proposal faced. The events at Falmouth will be set in the context of national debates over the establishment of time signals for the benefit of mariners. Time signals can take a number of forms either audible or visual. The most usual audible method, before the advent of radio, being the firing of a gun; its advantage being that it did not depend on line of sight whilst the disadvantage was that the sound took a measurable time to travel to the observer. On the other hand a visual signal had the advantage that it was seen instantaneously by the observer but its use was dependent on a line of sight. At Falmouth the signal eventually chosen was a time ball, that is a sphere, which could be dropped at an appointed hour. It was situated on the Tudor tower of Pendennis Castle overlooking both the harbour, Carrick Roads and the Bay. Its westerly geographical position and commodious, safe harbour meant that Falmouth always looked outward to the sea to drive its growth and prosperity. It was chosen as the base for the Post Office long distance overseas Packet ships. When the advance of technology meant that this operation was lost, it continued to service the growing mercantile trade but also expanded its interests into ship repairing, shipbuilding and tourism. Towards the end of the nineteenth century as the first deep water port on entering the English Channel Falmouth benefitted from the practice of vessels calling for telegraphed discharge orders which associated its name with the familiar Charter Party clause ‘for orders’. While it never became a significant exporting port for the Cornish industrial hinterland, its growth as a port was such that by 1870 it was necessary to establish a Board of Harbour Commissioners by Act of Parliament to regulate maritime activity.2 A Chamber of Commerce had already been formed in 1865 to promote the growing commercial interests of the town. There is no detailed or comprehensive survey on the history of time signals or, more specifically, time balls. They are barely mentioned by histories of navigation.3 A seminal paper on the invention and early development of the time ball, and one that does have some relevance to the present study, is that by Bartky and Dick.4 Previous published material on the Falmouth time signal is limited, being only brief passing references which are misleading or in error.5 Troze, Volume 3, Number 2, April 2012 Page 3 The Falmouth Time Ball Ronald S Hawkins The main primary sources used here are the Harbour Commissioners’ Archives and contemporary newspapers. Establishing the timing and sequence of many early moves at Falmouth is made difficult by the fact that none of the Chamber of Commerce records from this period survive. Fortunately, they were available when Baker wrote a history of the Chamber of Commerce. To increase the uncertainty the Chamber did not allow the press to attend their meetings until 1896.6 Contemporary technical articles which were published in various journals; these proved particularly useful in understanding the original design, the telegraphic transmission of time signals and release mechanisms.7 No detailed research has been undertaken in the National Archives for this article, and there will be more material relevant to the Admiralty and the Greenwich time signals. In particular they may throw more light on the correspondence between the Chamber of Commerce and the Devonport Dockyard Superintendent, local copies of which have been lost.8 Why Time The middle decades of the eighteenth century saw advances in technology which Signal? allowed the culmination of two differing approaches to solving the problem of longitude. One, an elegant, astronomical and mathematical solution proposed by scientists used the movement of the moon against other heavenly bodies as a clock, and the other, more practical, approach proposed by a Yorkshire carpenter turned clockmaker was an accurate, reliable chronometer carried on board ship.9 Harrison and the clockmakers that followed him provided a convenient means of keeping time at sea. But chronometers were expensive, as much as £80 each in the 1780s, and, therefore, their use was slow to spread. It was not until the second half of the nineteenth century that they became at all common on board merchant ships. When they were carried it was necessary to check their accuracy as even the best could not keep perfect time in all conditions for months on end. So, before a voyage they needed to be ‘rated’, that is to have their ‘going’, or their daily rate of losing or gaining, measured by an Observatory or instrument maker using a transit circle to observe accurate time. During the voyage the only means of checking the accuracy of a chronometer was by the difficult and complicated lunar observations. These were championed by the Astronomer Royal and taught and practised until the beginning of the twentieth century. The only alternative was a call at a port were a time signal was available or were the longitude was known. Williams sums up the dilemma and points to the answer as follows: In ships which traded between ports without time signals the accumulative nature of chronometric error was a serious disadvantage of the instrument, equally, in the early years when the longitude of lesser ports was not known with adequate precision there was nothing but the lunar distance.10 During the second half of the nineteenth century this deficiency was addressed. A daily time signal able to be seen or heard by ships in port allowed a chronometer to be rated without the disturbing and potentially hazardous need to send it ashore. The most frequently used was a Time Ball. Eventually around 150 were installed worldwide. Superseded in the 1920s by wireless signals, very few survive, now operated largely as tourist attractions. Troze, Volume 3, Number 2, April 2012 Page 4 The Falmouth Time Ball Ronald S Hawkins Early Time As early as 1818 Captain Robert Wauchope of the Royal Navy realised that some Balls form of time signal, visible from vessels in port, would be a convenient and efficient method of checking chronometers without the need to take them ashore. He proposed a plan ‘for communicating time by means of telegraphs’.11 His description clearly shows the catalyst for the idea. He would have been familiar with the system of shutter telegraph stations established by the Admiralty across southern England during the 1790s, and realised that transmission was instantaneous between stations within sight of each other. Their efficiency was such that in 1805 the Admiralty could send a one o’clock time signal down the Plymouth Shutter Telegraph and have it acknowledged in three minutes, a distance of 200 odd miles each way.12 Wauchope saw that the system could be used to give an accurate time check to local observers.